Assad slammed at UN for gas attacks on Syrians

Five people were treated for ‘suffocation’ after Syrian regime air strikes on the northwestern town of Saraqeb, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. (AFP)

JEDDAH: The Assad regime was accused on Monday of new chemical gas barrel bomb attacks on civilians in Idlib province in northern Syria and the Eastern Ghouta enclave on the outskirts of Damascus.
In New York, Russia blocked UN Security Council condemnation of the gas attacks, despite what US Ambassador Nikki Haley described as “obvious evidence from dozens of victims.”
“We have reports that the Assad regime has used chlorine gas against its people multiple times in recent weeks, including just yesterday,” Haley said.
The US has proposed a draft statement condemning the use of chemicals as a weapon. “Russia has delayed the adoption of this statement — a simple condemnation of Syrian children being suffocated by chlorine gas,” Haley said.
Two barrels containing chemical gas were dropped from helicopters in Idlib on Sunday night, said Radi Saad of the White Helmets civil defense group. The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), a charity that supports hospitals in Syria, said its doctors in Idlib reported 11 patients with symptoms indicating the use of chlorine gas.
“The Assad regime has launched an unrestricted spree of chemical warfare attacks against civilians across Syria in recent days,” Oubai Shahbandar, a Syrian-American analyst and fellow at the New America Foundation’s International Security Program, told Arab News.
“The footage of victims who have been hit by Assad’s chlorine gas attacks is horrific and should raise alarm bells in the world’s capitals. The fact that Moscow in November vetoed efforts by the UN to send inspectors into Syria is further encouraging Assad to launch more chemical attacks.
“The UN is woefully deadlocked. The real question now is whether the US will take action.”
Syrian opposition leaders condemned the latest attacks. “The bloody campaign launched against Idlib and its countryside proves yet again that the regime and the Iranian axis are insisting on the continuation of the military solution, impeding any efforts to reach a political solution,” the Syrian Negotiations Commission (SNC) said.
The Assad regime, protected by Russia, had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria, the SNC said. “We demand urgent intervention and immediate action by the Security Council to … hold accountable the perpetrators of such crimes, and all other crimes, against the great Syrian people.”
The target for the chemical gas attacks in Idlib was the town of Saraqeb, near where militants shot down a Russian warplane on Saturday and killed its pilot.
A hospital in Kafranbel, another town in Idlib province, was also bombed on Monday morning. Another hospital, in Maaret Al-Numan, was struck three times on Sunday night and put out of service. An apartment building in the city of Idlib, the provincial capital, was destroyed. “It’s just punishment,” said Wissam Zarqa, an activist in Idlib. “When you are targeting hospitals, targeting Idlib city, it’s just to say ‘I am here, and I can hurt you’.”
In Eastern Ghouta, the opposition-held suburb of Damascus that has been designated a de-escalation zone, at least 28 civilians died in dozens of regime air strikes on Monday. The deadliest raids hit a market in the town of Beit Sawa, killing 10 civilians, two of them children.
According to news agencies, another nine civilians, two of them children and one a local rescue worker, were killed in Arbin. Nine more civilians died in strikes across the rest of the besieged region, and dozens more were wounded.
In Arbin, the lifeless bodies of young children were laid out on the floor of a hospital, said AFP. One of the dead was a member of a volunteer rescue force in the town, and a group of his colleagues wept over his body. Outside, a man sat sobbing silently on top of a pile of rubble after having lost two of his family in the raids.